Some years ago, Ginger and I were in Paris and we attached ourselves to edge of a tour group walking through Notre Dame Cathedral, mostly because I wanted to pick up a few more pieces of useless facts and information to store in my brain. The guide was talking about the stained glass windows when…

We run a two-person line in the kitchen at Duke, which means I have one other guy cooking with me at dinnertime. As the year has gone by and we have developed more of a customer base, the two of us stay quite busy; Wednesday night we served 104 dinners. One of the ways we…

The word for the day is mirepoix. Relax. I don’t have forty-odd French cooking terms to bend into Lenten metaphors. But I do have two. Mirepoix is the French name for the “trinity” of ingredients that serve as the foundation for most soups: onions, carrots, and celery. In Cajun cooking, you substitute bell peppers for…

I don’t come by organization easily. I’ve never been one to know exactly where a particular piece of paper is, nor one who naturally finds a way to categorize life and collect things in an ordered fashion. I suppose I could compliment myself somehow by saying I’m a more organic organizer, but the truth is…

I’m not sure when I first heard of Esperanto – high school, I think. Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof invented the language in the late nineteenth century to foster international harmony. Rather than pick one language for everyone to learn, which might leave the native speakers of that language with an advantage or an attitude, everyone…

It’s been a long time since I was an English teacher, but I am still capable of correcting mistakes, being bothered more than most by ones we, as a society, have chosen to let slide. “First Annual . . . ,” for example; it can be the first, but it can’t be annual until there…

Today is the day, baseball fans, when we hear the words we want to hear: “Pitchers and catchers, report.” And if you want to know one of the reasons I’m a Red Sox fan, I give you Kevin Youkilis, who just signed a multi-year deal and still showed up early to spring training. Go Sox….

I have a growing shelf of books about the experience of being a chef, thanks to my friend Mia who is kind to send one at every birthday and Christmas, and sometimes in between. This Christmas’ offering was The Sharper the Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s…

I spent yesterday sorting throughthe stacks of papers – bills, mailers,magazines, notes, bills accumulatedon the dining room table; somerequired a decision of me; othersneeded nothing more than to bethrown away. I had to pay attention. I understand more why archaeologistshave to dig through layers and layersto find those who came before us. Peace,Milton

About a month ago, as I was sitting in church, my mind bounced from one hymnal to another as we sang something familiar from our song book and the next thing I knew the song playing in my head was an old Sunday night favorite from my Baptist days: Redeemed, how I love to proclaim…